I noticed in the change log that spear was decreased tier 5 10% and spirit was buffed tier 5 10%. I understand the point of the change. The idea is to make spirit better/more powerful as it is the obvious higher skill/never used one previously.

I think the idea was great but the change could need a little more. I'm interested more in hearing other peoples opinions but based on my game play experience thus far spear has still been the better choice of bone spirit.And it seems a lot of gear is more spear oriented ( marrowwalks 6-8 i.e. )

I've hit a 900+ mana pool @ 60 and still could not keep up casting spirit versus spear. Spear was by far the better choice.

Now this is only based on early game and I'm not making a final verdict here. I'm sure there are bone necros farther along who have a second voice.Again I repeat I am not making any FINAL verdict here. Just opening a discussion.

Purpose of this thread is to find out one thing.

Did the nerf to spear/buff to spirit succeed in what it was intended? Making spirit the better choice to spear?

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Tier 5 damage doesn't start till soft level 28-29 though. So it's really more of a NM/Hell damage change. What sort of damage levels are you seeing for your mana costs I wonder? It would be very easy to make bone spirit the preferred boss killer by giving it a better single target DPS to mana cost ratio than bone spear.

Considering the mild damage advantage bone spirit has over spear... My initial inclination is to make bone spirit's mana cost ramp identical to bone spear. My experience with seeing balance doled out is that players are just too damn sensitive to damage changes. While they might complain about high mana costs and not use a skill because of it... its very rare to see players actually complain about mana costs being too low.

To give bone spirit a more appropriate damage to mana cost ratio via solely a damage tier/synergy change would likely rock what has been a rather steady damage balance boat. Also there's the fact mana pots existance makes it impossible to balance burst damage for high mana cost skills (someone could just simply drop a mana pot bomb so that a caster can just cast away with meteor DPS as they jug mana pots non stop).

For this reason I suspect it will simply be best to drop the mana cost. Going a bit low on the mana cost is a lot less likely to generate an uproar. Making spirit mirror spear for mana costs is just simply an initial mana cost proposal. If anyone has any other mana cost ramp proposals I have one engine limitation people need to follow when suggesting a mana cost progression. The ramps must be in 1/256ths (or any power of 2 fraction such as 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc). It's impossible for the game engine to cleanly accept fractions such as 1/3 or 1/5th.

Yeah sounds good I just think spirit should be better anyway. Was funny to always see spear previously used.

I don't know if its... spear hits more than spirit does? Faster to cast? Not sure if there other reasons why spear was better but definitely the 10 ~ 20% up from spirit/spear was a boost just the mana cost is so much steeper than spear.

Spirit doesn't have to be exactly the same as spear but it should definitely not be double the mana for what it offers.

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

In the very least bone spear has minor AOE. If there's enemies lined up a bone spear can hit multiple enemies. A single target skill should have a damage to mana cost ratio edge over over an AOE skill.

Maybe the problem with spirit is that it can be abusable as a "magical seeker arrow", so with lowish mana costs it can be launched from afar without much trouble than drinking a couple of mana pots here and there, making bosses much more beatable, or even turning them into complete jokes

Just theorymoning here, if I recall correctly, the seeking property of the spirit is much wider than a whole screen, correct me if I'm wrong.

@Tonykantos not entirely true. Spirit has a distance requirement in order to actually hit the target or it fails to land a successful hit. You have to be pretty close to land a successful hit. Spear has actually longer range on it. You can be farther from the enemy and spear it than you can spirit it.So while it does follow the target until each hit.. it isn't like a magical arrow as distance impairment requires it to be closer than you think. But I realize you were only suggesting... it's cool.

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

multi spirit would be good, 3 spirits per cast. There is a boss with this i dont remmenber who, but it would be nice.

its hard to compete vs spear, it pierce and hits so much targets, plus the minor mana cost in comparison, in D1 bone spirit was more like the spear in D2, piercing and shit, but that cant be done here because it would be like the old guided arrow hitting multiply and raping bosses crazily, but the multitarget can be done and maybe a 1 second stun for max skill. it was done with molten boulder, can be done here

Well you can, but they wont work like bone spirit. They would have to be a long chain of lightning fury clones with 1 target max and always explode. Every 15 or so frames, they would explode and fire another missile (so retargeting).

It's doable but they wouldn't die when they hit an enemy, they would spawn another missile until the chain ended (a bit like multishot chain lightning)

not sure if is samahin but there is a boss with it and doesn have this prob u said Dod '-' maybe doin a copy if this skill? well idk, you are the skilled modder here xD was just a suggestion that came to mind

make a teeth orb like sam hein instead of spirit, making spirit do more dmg wont make people use it, spear pierces and is faster thats why they use it. mentioned this in the change log section or whenever it was a dmg buff was not going to make it better than spear

I honestly haven't played or payed much attention to a bone necro.. I didn't even know spear was faster than spirit till I read blinkys post and tested it myself. Would be good to get more peoples input especially experienced bone necs.

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Main reason I didn't include the missile changes was because unlike monster movement speed a simple +1 missile speed was going to seriously effect the speeds of a lot of missiles. I figured it would be best to change missile ranges/speeds on a case by case basis.

Main reason I didn't include the missile changes was because unlike monster movement speed a simple +1 missile speed was going to seriously effect the speeds of a lot of missiles

not really. Most of spells use velocity 15++, so global +1 is less than 8% increase, huh. Bone spirit has 12 velocity, bone spear 24, guided arrow 24, so they got 25%(bspirt 15vel) and 4% increase with proposed changes. Balance breaking it seems.Edit: just checked: most of skills use velocity 24, charged bolts/inferno/arctic use 12. Dunno how you figured +1 would be too much

Quote:

I figured it would be best to change missile ranges/speeds on a case by case basis.

You could PM me that because I edited a lot of projectiles to match new high res plugin and I'd just remove global 1 ;/. I bet noone cares that double throw barb using axes can't hit anything near edge of screen, or necro skeles have a half of screen range but shoot from 3/4

Last edited by Steel on Sat Sep 24, 2011 2:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Missed a saying a not in the post. Anyways I meant it wasn't going to seriously effect their speed. Besides... if soulmancer's special skill had its missile speed increased it would of actually nerfed the skill.

From 12 to 20 is almost 70% inc. It's way too fast. Inc from 12 to 15 (25%inc) seemed ok while I was testing it but you can try 16 (33%inc) its range is pretty high so that change will ensure all missiles will hit fast opponents like Diablo or Meph.

@Steel guess everyone can agree here. No need to make it spirit crackhead fast. That would be OP probably. 25% is a start or 33%. Anyway.. major point to be accomplished is making spirit the better choice for spear.

What did u find in your test steel besides the faster speed? Was it better than spear?

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I don't know where this talk about bone spirit having less range than bone spear is coming from myself.

Anyways bone spear is 24 velocity and range 40 tiles (a tile should be 2/3rds a yard for the various skills but certain skill functions such as firestorm treat 1 tile as a different distance).

Bone spirit is 12 velocity and range 50 tiles. Changing the velocity to 20 would be a 67% buff to speed. Let's keep in mind though that the soulmancer boss casts a 20k damage bone spirit whenever he's smacked. This would make those bone spirits an awful lot harder to dodge.

@increasing spirit velocity well mancer really is a boss that is suppose to be almost impossible anyway so is it going to be such a big deal? Steel already killed him on SC.. though it might make his spirit like insta kill on anyone. If anything he can be edited later if it's too impossible. But if it's going to be a big deal than editing the BS speed may not be the best idea?

Something else has to be done then

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Basically someone in the thread earlier was saying that bone spirit didn't have as much range as bone spear I thought. As far as the txt files are concerned though bone spirit has 25% more range than spear.

--Double Post--In any case we don't need to be making Soulmancer's bone spirit so fast that only a trapper could outrun it with BoS (or for that matter a sorc tele away from it). We could increase the range though so that the spirit is more likely to chase down a moving target.

It was me who implied that Spear had more range but what I was more so trying to say is that from the distance spear is much better than Spirit due to increased speed which theoretically doesn't mean that Spirit has less range but if you met spirit/spear @40 tile range Spear would far out perform due to the fast speed. That was the merit of the point I meant and Spirit dies if it doesn't hit the target in a certain time frame I believe? Not entirely sure.

Anyway regardless... if speed won't be buffed then something else has to be done to compensate and there doesn't seem like many options here for Spirit. Increasing the speed is probably ideally the best change you can do without over powering the Spirit. Unless someone else has some ingenious balance idea for making Spirit better than spear.

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Actually increasing the range of a missile will increase the time it stays up and travels. So if the problem is just simply the spirit isn't lasting long enough to hit the target the range could always be doubled or something so bone spirit can reach a target that had a sudden burst of movement. Most boss targets tend to not be actually that mobile overall actually.

Sure there's bosses like diablo where they can suddenly zip over to an other point. If bosses actually moved enough overall for even bone spirit to never hit regardless of how much range it has then a lot more would be having troubles hitting than just bone spirit.

Well I don't the issue is that it dies before it hits the target. I was simply pointing out that it may die before hitting the target... more typically a moving fast target. Increasing the range just opens the possibility of exploitation by casting from a very very far distance and then being able to avoid some of the counters by running/moving around. I don't think many people are having that kind of issue with the bone nec though. ( The spirit death before reaching enemy target )

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

I don't know where this talk about bone spirit having less range than bone spear is coming from myself.

Anyways bone spear is 24 velocity and range 40 tiles (a tile should be 2/3rds a yard for the various skills but certain skill functions such as firestorm treat 1 tile as a different distance).

Bone spirit is 12 velocity and range 50 tiles. Changing the velocity to 20 would be a 67% buff to speed. Let's keep in mind though that the soulmancer boss casts a 20k damage bone spirit whenever he's smacked. This would make those bone spirits an awful lot harder to dodge.

The "range" column is the duration of the missile in frames, not how many tiles it can go over. Thats whats skewing your results.The velocity column controls how many pixels the missile can travel per second (25 Frames)A tile is 80px high x 160px wideA yard is 24px high x 48px wideA subtiles is 16px high x 32px wide

the range column is actually duration then that would mean that bone spirit actually has less range than bone spear. If that's the case then what about this proposal:

Make bone spirit have the same mana cost ramp as bone spear. Also increase the range column from 50 to 80 so that bone spirit has the same range upper limit as bone spear when you factor in their speeds.

I don't understand the physics in the change though. It's simply impossible for Spirit to be faster than Spear by increasing the range.

i.e. a spear @ 50 range verse a spirit at @ 50 range ( set to 80 ) will still travel the same speed. It means that spear is still going to be faster/better choice over spirit, am I right so far? If not.. someone explain to me how range will make Spirit travel faster? I don't understand.

EDIT: Would be much more simple to just put up a data folder and have several people test.

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

With the proposal i'm making spirit still will only be half the speed of spear. It's just the range column change increase makes it last twice as long as spear (thus a 60% range increase compared to what it is now). Besides it's a homing skill so it can just redirect itself if the boss moves some. It's not like we have any bosses that constantly move all over the place (so the fact its slow shouldn't prevent it from hitting since its homing). Once the boss settles down the homing factor should drag the spirit onto the boss anyways.

The only major problem here is that this sort of change does nothing at all to address the issue here. It just allows spirit to be exploitable as I reiterated before. You can cast from a farther distance and therefor avoid projectiles.

I was able to kill Diablo in norm on an untwinked bone nec in a long long long fight by avoiding his projectiles/counters due to the fact that spear is ranged and you can lock the target. ( A lot of people on HC witnessed this )

Allowing spirit to have farther range does nothing at all to address the main issue here of spear being the better skill. It will just allow bone necs to cast spirits all day and out micro the bosses projectiles.

Lowering mana cost is a +1 for sure.

As far as increasing the range.. I don't see any justifiable means to do so. If anyone can explain the reasoning in doing this or why they see it as a fitting solution then please explain if you would.

It would be better to increase spirit speed SLIGHTLY ( without over powering Soulmancer ) and then bring the mana down than it would be to increase the range dramatically and bring the mana down as for reasoning above.

EDIT: Or if the speed change is a problem via mancer Kevins proposal wouldn't be bad of negating beast resists sort of like the change on FoH/Hammerdins. Empowering but not over powering.. good sense of balancing.. won't rape any act bosses but decent vs some of the subbosses.

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

Bone spirit was great back in the day with the marrow walk bug and I also recall that the gear such as Bshade was more balanced then it is now between spear and spirit.. Only thing that I see now is its over all speed and maybe abit of dmg increase ...During boss's i'm for spear for its speed.. Another Idea would be lol change spirit into higher upgraded spear examplemake it like mephs multy shot spear .. Max # of spears at max lvl would be 4 and take out the pierce so it wouldn't be op and you would use them back to back . Normal bone spear would be more for trash and the multy shot would be more for boss's .. This is just an off the wall idea so don't flame me..

But if you guys want to make spirit really reliable it will need speed and dmg .. Atm i'm running a bone necro so I will see how it is as I lvl more..

_________________P.S. Have I superceeded your infininate need for proper English now or will your mind forever be locked in a perpetual stacis.

Ya I agree Lee speed is the biggest down fall when it comes to spirit.. And even if The mancer boss gets alittle buff from spirit getting more speed.. Can't we change the chance% for when spirit goes off when hitting the mancer boss to counter the effect for the speed the new spirit would bring ? Say if the % is 95% to counter melee hits change it to 70 to 75%..Also taming the % will make it a more kill able in HC so those guys don't get the shaft for a great charm.. Just a thought..

_________________P.S. Have I superceeded your infininate need for proper English now or will your mind forever be locked in a perpetual stacis.

I think LR should pierce something in terms of magic even if it's only 10 or 15%.

Regarding magic pierce anyway.. Kevin told me it goes into -negative like all other elements. Is there any way to test this or know for sure? I don't know if Kevin tested himself or not but for a long time everyone has thought magic pierces only to ~0.

_________________"Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing."

As long as the code edit gives it the same pierce function as the other elements there's absolutely no reason for it to be able to go down to only 0. It should be able to hit -100 like the rest of the elements. Besides... Soulmancer's magic pierce and the supposed invisible difficulty penalty for magic resist wouldn't work if it really capped the pierce's down to only hitting 0.

The whole passive pierce section is a general check. (Ie. it is a minimum cap for all passive pierce, not a check for each element). IDK who made that up about mag res going to 0% only with pierce but it's been around for years.

Regarding magic pierce... What about the ignore function that the paladin's FoH and Holy hammers have? I remenber reading that when a resistance is ignored the pierce doesn't matter since the resistance will always be 0 no matter what.

I think LR should pierce something in terms of magic even if it's only 10 or 15%.

Regarding magic pierce anyway.. Kevin told me it goes into -negative like all other elements. Is there any way to test this or know for sure? I don't know if Kevin tested himself or not but for a long time everyone has thought magic pierces only to ~0.

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